First published: Creation 24(3):47 June 2002 Browse this issue Subscribe to Creation magazine

Nazis planned to exterminate Christianity

by Jonathan Sarfati

The Nuremberg trials of leading Nazis conclusively proved that they attempted genocide against the Jews, resulting in the Holocaust, in which some six million Jews were killed. But one senior member of the US prosecution team, General William Donovan, compiled a huge amount of documentation that the Nazis also planned to systematically destroy Christianity.

Donovan’s documents—almost 150 bound volumes—were stored at Cornell University after his death in 1959, and are now being posted online at the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion. This ‘criminal conspiracy’ involved the very top Nazis, including Adolf Hitler and propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, as well as Hitler Youth leader and Nuremberg defendant Baldur von Schirach.

These documents show that the Nazis, right from the beginning, realized that the church would have to be neutralized because of its opposition to racism and aggressive wars of conquest. So they planned to infiltrate the churches from within; defame, arrest, assault or kill pastors; reindoctrinate the congregations; and suppress denominational schools and youth organizations.

Bible-believing, evangelical churches were in the forefront of opposition, as opposed to compromising churches. Without a firm belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, liberal churches were more readily inclined to ‘reinterpret’ Christianity to suit the ruling pro-evolution ideology, which is similar to what happens with Darwinistic ‘science’ today.

As early as 1937, Protestant churches issued a manifesto objecting to Nazi policies, and the Nazis retaliated by arresting 700 pastors.

In an ominous parallel with current clamours by humanist and self-professed ‘civil liberties’ groups to ‘keep Creation in the church’ and obliterate all traces of Christianity from public life and schools, ‘The various Christian Churches … were confined as far as possible to the performance of narrowly religious functions, and even within this sphere were subjected to as many hindrances as the Nazis dared to impose.’

All this furthered the Nazis’ aim of a ‘slow and cautious policy of gradual encroachment’ to eliminate Christianity and use the churches’ organizational structures for their own purposes.

References and notes

1. The Nuremberg Project.
2. Papers reveal Nazi aim: End Christianity
3. Cf. Sarfati, J., The Holocaust and evolution, Creation 22(1):4, 1999, Bergman, J., Darwinism and the Nazi race Holocaust, CEN Technical Journal 13(2):101–111, 1999; eee also Q&A: Communism and Nazism.

“One little bit doesn’t make a difference.” It’s a good job CMI didn’t think like that. We had to start somewhere producing information, one word and one article at a time. Similarly, please don’t think your small donation doesn’t help. They can add together to bring a shower of blessings.